[EL] Business Week story about DreamWorks marketing team assisting Messina (Pres. Obama's campaign manager)

[Scarberry, Mark]

From Business Week (http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/30696-obamas-ceo-jim-messina-has-a-president-to-sell):

“At DreamWorks Studios, Steven Spielberg spent three hours explaining how to capture an audience’s attention and offered a number of ideas that will be rolled out before Election Day. An early example of Spielberg’s influence is RomneyEconomics.com, a website designed by the Obama team to tell the story—a horror story, by their reckoning—of Mitt Romney’s career at Bain Capital. Afterward, Spielberg insisted that Messina sit down with the DreamWorks marketing team. Hollywood movie studios are expert, as presidential campaigns also must be, at spending huge sums over a few weeks to reach and motivate millions of Americans.”

Pre-Citizens United, would free consulting from a corporation’s marketing team, at the CEO’s direction, be an illegal corporate contribution? I’m not that familiar with rules about in-kind contributions. Spielberg as an individual surely had the right to provide free advice to Messina, without it being counted against contribution limits, right? I suppose the members of the DreamWorks marketing team might have volunteered as individuals, rather than as a corporation’s employees, to provide these consulting services, but the story suggests that they did so at Spielberg’s direction.

Mark S. Scarberry
Professor of Law
Pepperdine Univ. School of Law


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